We use cookies to make interactions with our websites and services easy and meaningful, to better understand how they are used and to tailor advertising. You can read more and make your cookie choices here. By continuing to use this site you are giving us your consent to do this.

Salesforce.com [NYSE: CRM], the enterprise cloud computing (http://www.salesforce.com/cloudcomputing/) company, today announced it has completed its acquisition of Heroku, the privately held cloud platform for writing Ruby-based applications. The acquisition positions salesforce.com to take a greater share of the public cloud services market, projected by IDC to reach $55.5 billion in 2014.Heroku is the leading Ruby application platform-as-a-service,
powering more than 110,000 next-generation social and mobile cloud applications

Salesforce.com cloud platform will support major Cloud 2 languages – Java and Ruby

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 3, 2011 – Salesforce.com [NYSE: CRM], the enterprise cloud computing (http://www.salesforce.com/cloudcomputing/) company, today announced it has completed its acquisition of Heroku, the privately held cloud platform for writing Ruby-based applications. The acquisition positions salesforce.com to take a greater share of the public cloud services market, projected by IDC to reach $55.5 billion in 2014.

Heroku is the leading Ruby platform-as-a-service, built from the ground up to work in an open environment and take advantage of the Ruby language. Ruby has become the leading development language used to write Cloud 2 apps that are social, collaborative and deliver real-time access to information across mobile devices. Today, Heroku powers more than 110,000 apps, written by an avid following of Ruby developers.

Comments on the News

“Heroku is the leading Ruby application platform and Ruby is the language of the future, driving the next generation of cloud applications that are real-time, social and mobile,” said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com. “With Heroku, our platform can become the cornerstone of the next-generation of cloud computing.”

“Cloud app platforms are redefining how applications are built and run -- with an order of magnitude improvement in developer productivity and business agility,” said Byron Sebastian, Heroku CEO. “We're excited about accelerating Heroku’s -- and Ruby's -- momentum in leading this industry transformation."

Accelerating the Enterprise Shift to Cloud 2

Salesforce.com anticipates that the acquisition will help it attract and serve a critical mass of developers, customers and ISVs wanting an open, scalable and trusted Cloud 2 platform. Heroku and salesforce.com share a common vision of providing an open and portable programming environment that doesn’t require customers to take on the expense or maintenance headaches that come with buying and deploying hardware and software. In fact, Heroku was built with the same multi-tenant philosophy that is the hallmark of salesforce.com’s Force.com platform.

Salesforce.com not only gains a highly talented team and access to the rapidly expanding community of Ruby developers, but also gets technology and intellectual property assets that don’t exist anywhere else. Salesforce.com expects that -- together with VMforce, the enterprise Java cloud for the more than 6 million Java developers -- Heroku will enable the company to become the leading platform provider for a broad array of Cloud 2 applications.

About Heroku

Heroku was founded in 2007 by Orion Henry, James Lindenbaum and Adam Wiggins, with the goal of creating a platform-as-a-service that would make deploying, managing and scaling next-generation web applications as easy as writing them. The industry-leading Ruby application platform, Heroku features a workflow and interface that mimics how developers work. Heroku’s multi-tenant architecture means no virtual machines to manage, no software to install, and no complicated platform stacks to manage and tune. Developers can focus on writing their code – and Heroku takes care of everything else. Based in San Francisco, Heroku has about 30 employees.

About Salesforce.com

Salesforce.com is the trusted enterprise cloud computing company. Based on salesforce.com’s real-time, multitenant architecture, the company’s Force.com platform and apps (http://www.salesforce.com/crm) have revolutionized the way companies collaborate and communicate. Salesforce.com’s cloud offerings include:

• The Sales Cloud, for sales force automation and contact management
• The Service Cloud, for customer service and support
• The Jigsaw Data Cloud, for ensuring data integrity and quality
• Salesforce Chatter, for social collaboration
• The Force.com platform, for custom application development
• Database.com, the world’s first enterprise cloud database
• The AppExchange, the world’s leading marketplace for enterprise cloud computing
apps

Salesforce, the global CRM leader, empowers companies to connect with their customers in a whole new way. For more information about Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), visit: www.salesforce.com.

Any unreleased services or features referenced in this or other press releases or public statements are not currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase Salesforce applications should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available. Salesforce has headquarters in San Francisco, with offices in Europe and Asia, and trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “CRM.” For more information please visit https://www.salesforce.com, or call 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE.